Film Review, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf-Man

I can smile about it now but it wasn’t the sleep of angels that my thirteen-year old self was sleeping, in my recently-departed grand-uncle’s bed, in my granny’s house that nestled cheek-by-jowl against Newry’s RUC barracks, in the early years of ‘The Troubles’, after just watching Lon Chaney’s Jr. in ‘The Wolf Man’. The prolonged electrical storm didn’t help matters, either, nor did the bomb that went off a stone’s throw away, sometime during that storm/nightmare-interrupted sleep. (although of course I didn’t learn about that until I was awake but not feeling entirely refreshed, the following day.) Of course now I can look back on it fondly, and of my gran’s house and street later resembling an under-siege Warsaw ghetto, in the darkest days of World War II. (Of course she survived to tell a few tales and to torment my father when she later came to stay with us for a few months, – “too long”, my father would probably have confided to me, when both my mother and gran were out of earshot - until she got fixed up in her new, safer home – a few stone throws away from her former home, and well out of harm’s way. But she had the last laugh, outliving him by a few months.) Not that all that is particularly relevant to a review of ‘Frankenstein Meets The Wolf-Man’, but I thought it appropriate since the latter proved to be far more enjoyable than I could really have expected it to be and because – crucially – Lon Chaney Jr. (and, crucially, his makeup man) didn’t disappoint either those memories or my critical faculties. I’d been looking forward to it to see how well Bela Lugosi fit ‘Frankenstein’ (played by his “limey cock-sucker” rival in the original, of course!), but he was a massive disappointment: no competition for either Karloff’s interpretation or, here, Chaney. He didn’t say much apart from the occasional grunt so it would’ve been a doddle for Martin Landau (of whom, more anon.) I’d been expecting a creaky plot with cheapo-cheapo special effects and risible dialogue but in the latter case at least I was to be disappointed: the dialogue might have even been more literate than the original and certainly compared well with the ‘Bride’ Masterpiece. Of course the dam and castle were obvious models but then didn’t Hitch and Melville and other greats deploy models to similar great effect? It boasted quite an impressive cast-list besides the two icons: Lionel Atwill; Patric(k) Knowles (star of Robin Hood and ‘The Big Steal’, to name but two faves) and beautiful Teutonic (albeit a Lugosi compatriot) ice-maiden, Ilona Massey. Lon, of course, shone brightest for me (his Dad would have been proud of him, although he might have been pissed at the Jr. being dropped from his son’s name in the credits, if he deduced the inference that Hollywood had forgotten him.) Lon was the star but the actor who played the village innkeeper almost stole it from him; he was a grumpy, combative bollocks who hadn’t a good word to say to or about anybody who was in anyway connected to the late and unlamented Baron Frankenstein. Of course it was only fitting that he should light the fuse which exploded the dam, which released the torrent of water which washed away Castle Frankenstein and all who sailed in her. (Of course, given that Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man had risen from the dead at the beginning of this one, it’s not unreasonable to assume that both he and the Monster were reborn, to grace at least one more sequel and offshoot.) Not so much as a guilty pleasure as a most pleasant surprise; I’ll watch it again soon, and I’ll check out other unfamiliars in my too-long-neglected ‘Monsters of Horror’ set. Better than Netflix, anyday!